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Supplies checklist.
Garin closed his eyes and summoned up an image of his supplies checklist: everything he’d packed, everything he’d used, everything he might have lost, and everything he still had. He worked through the list until his heart rate slowed, his breathing evened out, and his cock softened. Then he worked through it again until his limbs turned heavy.
Despite the awkward arrangement, between his checklist and the solid warmth of Sazahk at his back after such a nerve-wracking day, Garin drifted off.
Sazahk woke with his lips brushing the delicate skin at the top of Garin’s spine.
His nose filled with the man’s musk. A smell somehow more commanding than the sulfur that surrounded them.
He was so warm.
His mind still soft with sleep, Sazahk curled himself around the hot human body in his arms. Garin was shorter than him by a few inches, not so much that it registered normally, but enough that he fit against Sazahk’s chest with an unnatural perfection.
So warm. Sazahk nuzzled the back of Garin’s neck and?—
His eyes popped open, and he froze.
This was to be expected, he supposed. He licked his lips and took stock of his positioning. At some point in the night or early morning, he’d turned onto his side, facing Garin.
He’d been tempted to do it the night before, if only to make sharing the sleeping bag more comfortable, but it had felt too intimate. He’d ruled out turning the other way due to the chance that Garin might see the scar on the back of his neck.
Garin didn’t have any scars on the back of his neck. Sazahk trailed his eyes along the curve of Garin’s throat, from the hinge of his jaw to the swell of his shoulder. He had quite a lot of freckles, but that spoke of damage from the sun rather than a scalpel.
After turning on his side, Sazahk’s arm had found its way around Garin’s waist and one of his legs had slipped in between Garin’s calves, tangling their bodies together.
This was a completely natural situation, biologically speaking. Seeking warmth and contact was instinctual and had nothing to do with any sort of higher-order reasoning. Qesh and humans were both social creatures, and sleeping together was a normal way to build comfort and promote bonding.
It didn’t mean anything.
Sazahk sighed silently and released the tension in his body. It didn’t mean anything, and frankly, it was nice.
The sky had barely brightened and Garin slept heavily, so Sazahk buried his nose in Garin’s hair.
He didn’t remember the last time he’d held someone. He wasn’t sure he ever had. Sexual encounters had never really appealed to him. Sex was all well and good as a near biological necessity and it was a useful tool for decreasing stress, frustration, and for keeping his mind in working order, but the intimacy of it made Sazahk’s skin crawl.
He always ended encounters as soon as mutual release was achieved.
He never cuddled.
Sazahk tightened his grip around Garin’s waist and brushed his thumb along the smooth skin over Garin’s firm abs.
Maybe this was so pleasant because Garin was asleep, and thus inherently nonthreatening. Or maybe it was because Sazahk was doing the holding instead of being held. Or maybe this was a reaction to witnessing the man’s near death the day before.
Sazahk closed his eyes and inhaled Garin’s very-alive scent. All night as he’d searched for sleep, he’d watched a replay in his mind of Garin’s eyes widening when Sazahk yanked him off balance, then the ground breaking out from under him and sending him plunging to his doom.
Garin had tried to protect him. He’d shielded him from the spray of boiling water with his own body.
And Sazahk had nearly killed him.
He clutched Garin tight to his chest and curled around him. Garin made a sleepy noise as he nestled against him. For all that Sazahk ever wanted to help people, he’d almost killed the man he held in his arms.
Sazahk knew his reaction had been instinctual, automatic, arising from a place of trauma. But that didn’t stop the guilt and the shame from coloring his whole body gray. At least Garin, only now beginning to stir, was still too asleep to see it.
He was going to be kinder to Garin, Sazahk decided. More patient. He refused to compromise on his goals, but that didn’t mean he needed to oppose Garin at every turn. He didn’t need to be constantly on the offensive.
That was how Garin had nearly been boiled alive, and that was unacceptable. Sazahk didn’t need to be fond of the man to want to avoid killing him.
Although, the lurch in Sazahk’s heart as Garin made another sleepy sound and laced his fingers with the ones Sazahk brushed over his stomach felt far too much like fondness for comfort.
